The Kitchen Tools Top Chefs Love and What Belongs in the Trash!!

The Chef's Cut

In this episode of The Chef's Cut, chefs Adrienne Cheatham and Joe debate essential kitchen tools, ranking them into three categories: profe

Key takeaways

• Glass and metal cutting boards should be thrown out—they damage knives and are impractical.
• Wooden or wood composite cutting boards are ideal for home use due to aesthetics, durability, and multi-purpose functionality.

Main topics

• Kitchen tool rankings: professional, home-use, trash
• Cutting board materials and their pros/cons

Notable quotes

"I will cut on your front sidewalk before I will cut on this glass cutting board."

"Those are the worst. I encountered one the first time and I was like, what is this for?"

Conclusion

Adrienne and Joe conclude that true kitchen essentials are those that balance

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:13) Today on The Chef's Cut, Joe and I are sharing our chef-approved kitchen essentials. The Cuisinats. I love this thing. We'll tell you which items you should throw directly in the trash. I go to a friend's house and I'm like, I thought I knew you. Can you own this? And we'll let you know whether the gadgets you see on social media are worth spending your money on. I was like, oh, this is going to be great. I was pumped for it. I've used it once. It has sat in my cabinet for a year. But first, Chef's Cut Nation, you know what time it is. Please take 10 seconds of your day to rate and review the show wherever you get your pods. It really helps. Speaker 1 (0:55) You know, we're always talking about the questions we get asked, whatever chef you talk to, wherever they are. We all get a lot of the same questions, right? And one that I love talking about. I love talking about gear. People ask us, like, well, what do you use for this? What do you use for this? And I think when we talk about anything, whether it's knives, spoons, whatever it may be, in my mind, there's kind of three tiers, right? There's the professional grade. There's the stuff that's in our kits, that's in our restaurants, that's... Speaker 1 (1:23) hanging in the back kitchens of where we work. There's the home stuff that maybe it's not, you know, I'm not bringing this to work, whether it's just because, you know, it's too ridiculous or whatever it is, but that we love. And it's still good quality. Still good quality. It just might not be appropriate for a work setting. Right. Some things need to be left at home. And then the third box, which is. people shouldn't have this. No one needs this. Put it on free box. Let the kids play with it. I don't know. Throw it in the trash. Yeah, I think those are the three tiers for me when I think of kitchen equipment. I love talking about that because like we talked about before, there is the worst chef question. Speaker 1 (2:06) What's your signature dish? What's your favorite thing to cook? This is one of the best chef questions. One of the best things you can ask. What's your favorite fill-in-the-blank of this type of equipment? The DM I always answer on Instagram. When somebody's like, I'm thinking about buying a knife. Like, do you have opinions? And it's like so many. You don't have the time in the day. How much time do you have? Or pans or whatever. So going into that today, we each are going to do three things. Yep. Essentials to any kitchen. And rank the three tiers. So where do you want to kick it off? So I am going to start it off with one of the basics. When you go into a kitchen and you know you're setting up to cook, it is probably one of the first things you're going to grab. And that is cutting boards. A good cutting board can make or break your day. I mean, that is absolute. Speaker 1 (3:02) So there is a cutting board that we use in restaurants that I don't even know if there's a brand that makes them. It's just that off yellow beige color. Yep. And it says NSF National Science Foundation in the corner. It has that NSF logo because it's bacteria resistant. So you're not going to get mildew and mold growing on it. Those ones where it's like they're heavier than they look like they'd be a plastic cutting board. Then you pick it up and you're like, this is like a... Speaker 1 (3:31) bag of cement. Right. It's like I've seen them in up to an inch thick, different dimensions. But that material, I think it's called like HGTE. Those inch thick ones, I'm pretty sure are bulletproof. Yeah. It's like it's like this polyethylene composite material, but it's bacteria resistant. It's soft enough so that it doesn't kill your blade. And that to me is the most important thing about a cutting board. If it doesn't have enough give on the surface. Speaker 1 (3:59) As soon as you cut something, it's going to dull your knife more and more each time. So for kitchens, I love that yellowish HDPE NSF. That's your top. That's your S tier. That's my guy. That's my go-to cutting board. For home, though, I like something that's a little prettier. I want something that if guests come over, it can sit on the counter. It doesn't look so utilitarian. It has a little bit of style to it. And I actually really like wooden cutting boards for home. Oh, yeah. Now, you do have to take care of them. You can't put them in the dishwasher. But I love a good wooden cutting board. And I have like, to have you sell, but I have like this one here. Oh, yeah. And you can get them smaller, to be clear. What's that? What's that? A little white oak? You know? I think so. It's a German brand. And you do have to. Speaker 1 (4:52) Take care of it. You just can't like you wash it with soap and then just make sure it dries thoroughly. It's not high maintenance, but it looks good if it's sitting on the counter and it's got this little well so that if I'm in a restaurant, I don't care if the juices run over because I've got a towel under my board. I'm cleaning up all the time anyway. But at home, this can catch any liquid running off if I'm cutting citrus or meat. Speaker 1 (5:16) So I love these. The wooden cutting boards are my go-to. I agree. The wood cutting board at home, it's like, and I will say to the point where it's like, there's a wood cutting board at every home that I cook at. Yeah, and it can live on the counter. You know what I mean? Like, there's one at my mother-in-law's. There's one at my mom's. There's one at my grandma's house. You know what I mean? Like, I have a couple at the house. I have, like, I've found if you go, they're really expensive, but if you go three inches, they last forever. Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:44) If you go shorter than that. This is two and I've had it for about eight years and it's no signs of wearing down. But I've found some of the other ones, they warp a little bit after time and all of that. If it's, you know, inch and a half or whatever. But I feel like the other home, it's like you have to have a combo. I do have one like plastic one with like the little, you know, kind of rubber corners on it. That's, you know what I mean? So it's like I can throw that on because I don't like cutting like alliums and like, you know, obviously any like raw poultry. Right. On the same. Speaker 1 (6:12) But I think it's like having a really nice wood board at home is like, it is such a necessity. It's a showpiece. Like you can use it for a cheese board. You can use it for a charcuterie. Like it's multi, it's a, it's a multi-purpose thing for me. But I also really like the wood composite for home use because they're thinner, but they're sturdy and you can put them in the dishwasher. Oh, those like bamboo things. It's their bamboo. Some of them are different materials, but they're durable, they're sturdy, and they take up less space because they usually come a lot thinner, but they don't warp. So I do like those also for home use, but the wood cutting board is my go-to. And I think there is a kind of cutting board that is nihilism. Hell broke loose when somebody invented this kind of cutting board. I don't know what they were thinking. And it is a glass cutting board. Speaker 1 (7:05) genuinely make it make sense. Like at what point people were like, you know what we should make like this out of is glass. Why? Why would you want to cut on glass? And I mean, it's like people of a certain generation all have them. I think my grandma had a built in glass cutting board in her kitchen at one point. Like it's just insanity. Yeah, it's absolute. Those are the worst. I encountered one the first time and I was like, what is this for? And it was it was actually at my sister's house. I think somebody gave it to her and she was like, it's a cutting board. I was like, no, it's not. No, it's not. This is a window. This is a window. Why do you have this window on your counter? Speaker 1 (7:45) I threw that shit out so fast. I was like, I will cut on a paper towel or a side towel today, and then I will go buy you a cutting board. Yeah, I will cut on your front sidewalk before I will cut on this glass cutting board. It's going to kill your knife. It's going to dull your knife with every stroke of the knife. Oh, it sounds horrible. It feels horrible. It's like the feeling of the knife hitting it. You're like, oh, like it is. The other one I've seen, I've never seen this in real life. I've only seen them on Instagram too, though. And that same vein is the metal ones. Oh, no. And to me, that should be like instant prison time. Yeah. Like if you have a metal cutting board, it's like you, you don't get to cook anymore. Speaker 1 (8:26) That's my cutting board rant, Joe. So I feel good getting that off my chest. I have my professional use cutting board. That's the NSF. I have my home use. That's the wood or wood composite. And I have my trash cutting board, which is metal or glass. Those should just never exist. They're not a thing. No. Oh, it just makes me mad thinking about it. But I want to hear your rant, Joe. What is your first of your three kitchen essentials, professional, home, and trash? So my first one is, because I get asked this one a ton from cooks to random people, is knife sharpening. Oh, good one. Speaker 1 (9:05) Because people ask about it all the time, right? And, you know, for the most part, I do tell people a lot. Like, are you fortunate enough to live in a place with a good knife shop where you can take them and get them professionally sharpened? If you're just using them at the house, just go once every six months. Get all your knives sharpened. But for chefs, for professional chefs, I think you should be able to sharpen your own knives. I think it's an important part. I think it's an important lesson. I think it's an important technique. Yeah, absolutely. So my chef grade one. Speaker 1 (9:31) is this bad boy. Oh, yeah. Thousand grit Kingstone. They sell this one that is literally the size of a normal brick, which I love. And those you got to soak. You got to use. They take time to learn it. You know, a great professional piece, but like having a really big one like that at the shop so you can sharpen and like the thousand grit, like even if you don't get into the fives, the six, the eights, those big time. Oh, I go all the way to 8000. I know you do. Speaker 1 (9:59) He worked at LaBernadette. I go to six. I don't go past six. You know what I mean? I don't need all that. But the thousand grit for most of the stuff, if you're regular on it, you hit it on a thousand grit, you're good to go. Yeah, that's true. For the home cook, though, this is a lot. It's a lot. You got to soak the stone for 20, 30 minutes. Yeah, and if you mess up the